Farscape — 2x07 — Home on the Remains
Synopsis
The crew, starving and desperate, head for a mining colony within a giant Budong carcass. When they arrive, they must contend with B'Sogg, the camp's overlord. Each of the crew goes to work in different ways to obtain necessary supplies. When a miner is attacked and killed by the Keedva, a vicious creature that roams the mining tunnels, Crichton soon discovers that B'Sogg, the colony's self-styled Keedva slayer, is in fact controlling the creature. B'Sogg unleashes the Keedva on an unarmed Crichton, leaving him to kill or be killed.
Filler rating: bad filler
No significant exposition, events, or consequences. And a lame episode on top of that. The relationship subplot between Chiana and D'Argo will become more important later, but it isn't necessary to watch this episode to understand that plot arc later. If you do decide to watch this one, you'll need to watch the even worse "Taking the Stone" first, as this episode references that one.
Remarkable scenes
- Aeryn shining intense light on Zhaan.
- John and Rygel being attacked by the creature.
- Pilot venting Moya's atmosphere.
- The creature taking out Chiana's friend Altana.
- John fighting the creature and impaling it with the door.
- Chiana shooting the Budong and spilling its toxins onto B'Sogg's arm, causing parts of his arm to melt away.
Review
Another less than stellar Chiana's past episode brings us to a dreary mining colony where she once mingled with some disreputable folk. Well some more than others anyway. Chiana brings Moya and her crew here because they're all desperately short on food. Conceptually, it's a decent idea for a story, but the details leave much to be desired.
Neither the plot down on the dead Budong nor the plot aboard Moya quite shines. Zhaan's extreme (over)reaction to starvation struck me as adding an unnecessary artificial urgency to a problem that seems straightforward enough already. They'll all starving. We didn't need Zhaan's crazy alien reaction to starvation to understand why starving is bad for our heroes.
But down on the Budong what we get isn't much better. It sure was convenient that Moya just so happened to show up just as B'Sogg killed his brother. Not that I cared much though as none of the people from Chiana's past in this episode were terribly interesting anyway.
Just about the only thing that was interesting about this episode was D'Argo and Chiana struggling to define the terms of their budding relationship. The kiss at the end is a nice payoff to this. But even then, they end up more or less where they started. The latent attraction between the two was obvious several episodes ago.
In the end, while this episode has a few enjoyable scenes such as Zhaan's pollinating or John fighting the creature and is certainly worth an extra point for the D'Argo and Chiana character moments alone, nothing in this episode was indispensably important. You wouldn't be missing much by simply skipping it and thus it doesn't warrant a very flattering rating.